copyright expiration

An interesting example of how the public would lose by copyright extension can be found at

   http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9803/13/ulysses.ap/index.html

This is an article at cnn interactive about James Joyce's _Ulysses_. The article notes that "Joyceans in the United States have waited a long time for [expiration of copyright in _Ulysses_.] There's still no agreement on the correct text...and the copyright expiration means differring versions can now be made available. Several publishers... are hoping to put out books."

The article goes on the describe how the Joyce estate is using ambiguities in the copyright law to assert that the work is still under copyright. This has prevented most new editions from being published.

To my mind, everything good that copyright does it does already. Everything bad that it does will be made worse by longer terms.

In the case of Joyce's novel, the 1922 publication date as the correct starting point of the 75-year copyright term will probably be upheld, and _Ulysses_ will therefore be ineligible for extension.

But we may ask, what other book that the book trade has "waited a long time for" will be locked up by the monopolists for another 20 years? We may fairly say to the monopolist: any money your monopoly privilege might have brought you, you have had 75 years to earn. Now it's time to let the free market work. Time to let _all_ the marketing geniuses in the book trade have a crack. You won't be in a _worse_ position than any of your competitors; just no better.

The last point may not even be quite true. The former monopolist might instead retain a competitive advantage even after the expiration of its monopoly. If we consider the example of _Ulysses_ again, we see that, though the Joyce estate loses the monopoly over printing the 1922 text of Ulysses with the expiration of copyright, they might still have - or at least have a say in the use of - many of Joyce's manuscripts, letters, papers, and other items. And they still have the Joyce name. The Joyce estate, if it wishes to, might very well be able to keep itself in a position to influence Joyce scholarship and make money from lovers of Joyce's writings, even after _all_ of Joyce's U.S. copyrights have expired.

Timothy Phillips
<phillips[_at_]mail.nhn.ou.edu> Received on Wed Mar 18 1998 - 17:45:52 GMT